Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Leveson's hypocrite's charter

Press freedom is under
threat. Politicians, business leaders and a whole host of celebrities are
desperate for more laws to bring the beast to heel.

This powerful coalition claims
newspapers have run wild for too long.

But, with a few notable
exceptions, show me a critic of the press and I will show you a hypocrite with
something to hide.

It’s true that what is in
the public interest is not necessarily what interests the public. We all like a
bit of gossip but that’s not a good defence of press freedom.

Yet there is a fine line
between tittle-tattle and holding our governing elite to account.

They may class some of their
activities as private – but at what point is it reasonable for a public figure
to close the door on “press intrusion”?

Many public figures spend
years courting the press, opening up to journalists about the most intimate
aspects of their lives, in the hope of selling more CDs, books and films,
winning votes or gaining power.

The rich and powerful are
always in danger of being carried away by their own publicity and assuming the
public interest and their own interests are identical.

When their failings are
exposed, they turn on the people they courted for so long.

They blame the press when
their marriages break down, they get arrested for breaking the law, they lose
an election or they bankrupt one of the biggest banks in the world.

True, newspapers
occasionally cross the line between what we have a right to know and what we
might like to know.

But sometimes it’s only then
that newspapers reveal the deeper truths about those who would command our
support, our respect, our attention and our money.

The long list of
phone-hacking “victims” who queued up to condemn the press at the Leveson
inquiry is a veritable Who’s Who of the rich and famous.

The truth is, though, that
phone hacking, like bribing police officers, is illegal. It does not require
new legislation to stop it.

All that’s needed is for law
enforcers to do their job. Sadly, rather like the watchdogs which failed to
regulate the British banking system, they have been caught napping.

There is no reason to
destroy the press simply because some people – and it remains to be seen who
they might be – have broken the law.

As a nation, we are lucky to
enjoy a free press – and by “press” I do mean newspapers.

TV and radio are different.
Don’t look to them to expose the next MPs’ expenses fiasco, for instance. And
don’t expect them to break news about scandals at your local council or your
local hospital.

The press is not free, of
course. It is hedged in with laws governing what can and cannot be said, and
when.

That’s one reason why you
can believe what you read in the papers. We have to tread carefully to make
sure we get our facts right.

We have to ensure we are not
libelling someone, we’re not in contempt of court or maybe breaking a secret
superinjunction.

And there is more to freedom
of the press than the ability to delve into the lives of people who would lord
it over us.

A free press is the
cornerstone of a free society. Once Governments or their placemen decide what
you may or may not read, democracy itself is on the slide.

We in Britain take our freedom for
granted. We don’t worry about it. We don’t fight for it. Often, we don’t even
use it – most of us didn’t vote in the elections for police commissioners, for
instance.

Yet it’s no coincidence that
this is one of only two countries in Europe which enjoyed uninterrupted
democracy for the whole of the 20th century (the other was Sweden).